


Patch Me Up, Doctor K

by Izupie (orphan_account)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Amnesia, Eddie Kaspbrak Comes Back To Life(?), M/M, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier-centric, Strange Things Happen In Derry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-25 06:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22291873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Izupie
Summary: Can it be true? What they say about Derry? They say it's a place where nobody who dies there, ever really dies.Child-eating-space-clowns? Maybe. 27 year old scars appearing, then disappearing? Possible. People coming back to life? No way. That's crazy.But maybe scars aren't the only thing that heal after Pennywise is defeated... A whole town-sized wound just takes a little longer to recover from.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 46





	Patch Me Up, Doctor K

**Author's Note:**

> I'll preface this with an apology to any of my subscribers who are only here for bnha content, as I've decided 2020 is my year of diversifying and branching out into different fandoms. I will still be writing bnha stuff though - but if you've subscribed to me exclusively for one specific fandom, this is just a warning not to get too disappointed with me ahahaa aaa a (sorry!)
> 
> \----
> 
> anyway, the actual author's note for this fic is just me jumping into one of my favourite tropes of 'I know Eddie's dead,, but like,,, what if he,,,,, wasn't?'

There was something about the clinically bright white, sterile smelling Derry Pharmacy that made Richie’s skin crawl. And he’d been to the house on Neibolt. Three times.

Richie shuddered as he pushed his glasses further up his nose, in a vain attempt to get the lights to stop glaring off the glass and making it hard for him to see as he walked up the aisle, then muttered a curse as it really did absolutely nothing to help.

He wasn’t even supposed to be in the pharmacy in the first place. A sigh nearly rattled out of him as he thought despairingly of the reason that he was back in Derry at all.

It had already been a whole year.

A year since he’d found out that he had friends he would die for.

A year since he’d lived every bullied child’s dream and buried an axe in the back of his bully’s skull.

A year since he’d helped to kill a child murdering demon clown from space.

A year since he’d finally decided to confront his own feelings and stop running away from the truth.

A year since he’d remembered that he’d been in love with his childhood best friend.

A year since he’d fallen in love with him again.

A year since he’d lost him…

So, he’d come back. He hadn’t planned it. Just jumped in his car and drove.

Another one of Richie Tozier’s Brilliantly Fucked Up Ideas.

Richie’s frown increased as he weaved up and down the aisles. He squinted against the harsh light and scrunched his nose at the strong smell of disinfectant and chemicals. (He could kid himself that that was the reason that his eyes were rapidly filling with tears, right?) He’d been trying so fucking hard not to think about how much everything in the pharmacy reminded him of Eddie, but every pack of weird pills or vitamins in every letter of the alphabet or dumb little tube of hand sanitiser gel threatened to overwhelm him. Only the burning pain in the arm he was holding close to his chest kept him from fleeing the building altogether.

He felt a little sick actually.

Throwing up in a pharmacy… he could find a pun out of that somewhere, couldn’t he? Not that he’d ever top the zinger he dropped in the library last year. The timing had been spot on, but the delivery hadn’t exactly been his best – what with the throwing up straight after and everything.

He really needed to stop doing that.

After wandering through an aisle that he was pretty sure he’d already gone up and down twice already, Richie finally did let a sigh out – and the sound was rough and raw.

“Hey, uh, where are your bandages?” he asked loudly, turning to the woman behind the counter.

“I’m sorry?” she replied politely, startled out of whatever she was writing.

“Bandages,” Richie repeated, “I’ve uh- I kinda fell.” He shrugged and chuckled. “Out my own car. Climbing out of it.”

He wasn’t going to mention that he had been outside of what was left of the house on Neibolt Street (that had been cleared away and was now a slab of concrete that filled in the hole) and he had been crying so hard he’d misjudged the step out of his own car and landed heavily on his arm.

At least he hadn’t faceplanted the floor. (He wouldn’t have been able to function if he’d have broken another pair his glasses in this shitty town again.)

Richie waited while the woman from behind the counter made her way around it and pointed to the end of the aisle facing her. She had creases at the edges of her eyes as if she smiled too much, and short bushy brown hair. “We actually moved the bandages recently,” she said with a helpful lilt to her voice, “so they’re on the end here now. I guess that makes them a little hard to find though.”

Richie forced a smile as he approached, still holding his arm close to his chest. “Great. Ah, yep, that’s the good stuff. Great. I’ll have whatever would be good for wrapping this up.” He twisted his injured arm towards her and pointed at it with his other hand.

He didn’t have any medical experience, beyond the memories of whatever he’d absorbed as a kid listening to Eddie’s rants, but he was pretty sure the wound on his arm wasn’t bad enough to cause her face to pale.

“Wrap it up?” she repeated. “Oh, sir, no- you need- I mean, it looks like you really need medical attention. That graze looks nasty, and there’s- gosh there’s so much dirt around it, that can’t be good.”

“Eh. The road was a little dusty, but it’ll be fine.”

“And there’s a bit there that looks really deep.”

“Oh yeah, it did bleed quite a bit, but hey, I’m still walkin’ and talkin’ so it can’t be that bad. Just needs a bit of a, y’know-” Richie made a circling motion with his good hand around his injured arm “-so I can get back to where I need to be and then I can get out of here.”

Richie really didn’t want to spend any more time in Derry than he absolutely needed to. He just wanted to pay his respects to Eds. He just… needed to talk to him. It didn’t matter that the house wasn’t there anymore. He just needed to go to where he last remembered Eddie alive. He wanted to tell him how well he’d been doing; he’d quit drinking, got therapy, started writing his own material, kept in regular touch with the Losers... He wanted to tell him how much he missed him.

He missed him so much.

So fucking much.

Richie ran a hand over his face. “Y’sure it really needs a proper patch up job? I can’t just botch it until I get home?”

The woman shook her head, still quite pale.

“Okay, okay. Where’s the old guy that used to run this place? He knows first aid, right?”

“I’m afraid he retired a year ago.”

“Ok _ay_ ,” Richie said slowly. He raised his eyebrows. “Do _you_ know first aid?”

She shook her head more vigorously. “I’m sorry, sir, but I actually only started working here a few days ago. My wife took over the place from her father last year, and she’s visiting him in the hospital while I look after the shop. I’ve been learning a bit of first aid, but only from the books she’s been showing me.” She smiled sheepishly. “But I can get you a prescription fast as lightning,” she added brightly. “Not that that’s very helpful in this situation.”

_Wife? In Derry?_

Richie felt his features soften and he waved his good hand dismissively. “Don’t worry then, uh.” He squinted at the name tag on her shirt, written in sharpie. “Betty. I guess it is one of my favourite arms, don’t want it falling off or anything.” He sighed in defeat, then put on an odd voice and added, “Take me to your leader.”

Betty smiled but blinked in confusion.

“A doctor,” Richie clarified, “I’ll go see a doctor. But only because I wouldn’t want the ghost of my arm coming back to haunt you if I died.”

Silence met his odd brand of humour and he found himself wishing (not for the first time) for Eddie to be there; to call him an asshole and rant about his dumb jokes.

Betty nodded. “Oh good. I know a doctor who lives not far from here. He told me that I could call him if I needed anything while Greta’s away.” She moved back behind the counter and pulled a cell phone from beneath it.

Richie had another look at the bandages while she was tapping the screen and brought the phone to her ear. He picked up a small packet that crinkled in his hand and he felt like he could still hear the echoes of the voices of them all as kids, patching up Ben with the supplies Bev had helped them steal. It brought a smile twitching at the corners of his lips. But he was snapped sharply out of his memories by the sound of a door opening and the shrill ringing of a cell phone.

“Oh, there you are, Doctor K! I was just ringing you – what amazing timing!”

_Doctor… K?_

“Really? Well that’s uncanny.” Came the reply of a voice that made Richie’s heart feel like it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to stop or leap out of his chest. A voice that he’d heard in his nightmares and dreams so often over the last year that just those few words had him trembling and- oh look, he definitely wants to throw up.

Steady footsteps sounded towards them both.

“There’s a man here who needs patching up,” Betty continued, unaware of how badly Richie was shaking, still hidden at the end of the aisle, suddenly unable to move even an inch.

_Get in there, Doctor K._

“Patching up?” The voice that is-definitely-Eddie-but-can’t-be-Eddie replied.

“Just here," Betty said. "Says he fell out of his car, and he’s grazed his arm quite badly.”

When the man scoffed openly Richie thought he'd never heard anything as beautiful. It made him cry again.

“Who falls out of their own car?” There’s something barbed and clipped in that voice that strikes straight through Richie’s chest and he doesn’t think he can breathe and he’s definitely going to chuck his guts up, fuck _fuck_ \- is this what having an asthma attack feels like?

The footsteps stopped.

Richie finally turned.

He dropped the bandage packet.

_It’s impossible._

_It’s impossible._

_It’s-_

_“Eddie?”_

**Author's Note:**

> There is a part 2 of this in my head, but I don't know when/if I'll get to write it, so I'm marking this off a oneshot for now.


End file.
